IDLEWILD

US, 2006, 121 minutes, Colour.
Andre Benjamin, Big Boi/ Antwan A. Patton, Terrence Howard, Paula Patton, Cicely Tyson, Ben Vereen, Faizon Love, Macy Gray, Ving Rhames.
Directed by Bryan Barber.

If this film were a piece of architecture, it might be called a Folly. Idlewild is one big, lavish, over the top film.

The setting is the 1930s in a small town called Idlewild among the black citizens of the town. Though small, it has a big club where singers hope that they will be signed to record labels and go to Chicago for the big time, where gangsters control the entertainment and the liquor and rely on moonshine deals during Prohibition, where men gamble and their wives wring their hands, where the funeral parlour is not short of business.

Andre Benjamin and Antwan A. Patton portray childhood friends. He is a piano player and composer who works days in his father’s mortuary and cares for his alcoholic parent. The other is the town’s mover and shaker with the club, the liquor and his girls (and wife and several children at home). Into their lives comes a talented singer (Paula Patton) as well as the local ambitious hood (Terrence Howard). We know, more or less, what is going to happen.

However, it doesn’t all happen in a clear and comprehensible way. The audience has to work on it. While we look at the central characters and plot, it is probably better to sit back and absorb the music.

One of the difficulties is that the most lavish, even extravagant, production number, like an old 30s musical, takes place during the closing credits when patrons have a reflex response to get up and leave.

Clearly aimed at the African American audience, it does not travel well beyond its niche.